Job Description

The Child First Clinician partners with a Family Support Partner to engage families who are referred to the Child First home-based intervention. Child First’s primary goal is to strengthen the caregiver-child relationship so that it serves both as a protective buffer to unavoidable stress and directly facilitates the child’s emotional, language, and cognitive growth. The Clinician uses trauma-informed CPP, a relationship-based, dyadic, parent-child treatment model, which focuses on the primary attachment relationships of the young child. The Clinician engages with both the caregiver and child in a supportive, reflective, and exploratory manner which fosters a protective, nurturing, and responsive parent-child relationship.

• Helping caregivers understand typical developmental challenges and expectations.
• Increasing caregivers’ ability to reflect on the meaning and feelings motivating a child’s behavior.
• Supporting caregivers’ problem solving.
• Helping caregivers understand the psychodynamic relationship between parental feelings, history, and the caregiver response to the child.
• The Clinician also provides consultation to teachers in early care and education settings, as needed.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Engage with the Child First family and the Family Support Partner in the collaborative family assessment process (i.e., gather information from interviews, observations of interactions and play, reviewed records, collateral sources, and standardized measures).
• Use all available information to develop a thoughtful, well-integrated clinical formulation and Child and Family Plan of Care, in partnership with the Family Support Partner and family.
• Provide Child First home-based psychotherapeutic intervention with young children and their caregivers using relational, dyadic psychotherapy (CPP) and other modalities.
• Help the caregiver gain insight regarding personal history (including trauma history), feelings for the child, and current parenting practices.
• Avert crisis situations by assisting the family in times of urgent need (e.g., risk of harm to child or caregiver, pending child removal), in consultation with the Family Support Partner and Clinical Supervisor.
• Provide mental health and developmental assessment and consultation within early care and education settings and to other early childhood providers.
• Embrace use of videotaping to enhance both therapeutic work with families and reflective supervision.
• Engage in weekly individual, Team, and group reflective clinical supervision with Clinical Supervisor.
• Engage actively in all aspects of the Child First Learning Collaborative, including in-person trainings, distance learning curriculum, and specialty trainings.
• Keep all appropriate documentation for clinical accountability and reimbursement.
• Participate in other clinical and administrative activities as appropriate.
• Other duties as assigned.

Job Qualifications:

Knowledge, Skills, and Ability:

• Experience working psychotherapeutically with culturally diverse children and families, including parent-child therapeutic work and play therapy with very young children (0-5 years), for a minimum of three years. Past CPP training is highly valued.
• Openness to learning, capacity for self-reflection, and eagerness to participate in reflective clinical supervision.
• Knowledge of relationship-based, psychodynamic intervention and early child development; parent-child relationships and attachment theory; effects of trauma and environmental risks on early childhood brain development, especially violence exposure, maternal depression, and substance abuse; and community-level risk factors (e.g., poverty, homelessness).
• Experience providing mental health assessment and consultation to early care and education sites. 
• Knowledge and experience working with adults with mental health, substance use, and cognitive challenges. 
• Experience providing intervention within diverse home and community settings.
• Ability to speak a second language (Spanish), highly valued.
• Strong commitment to the vision, mission, and goals of Child First and Solvista Health.
• Highly organized, self-motivated, reliable, and flexible (including willingness to work non-traditional hours, including at least one evening). 
• Able to work as part of a team.
• Able to communicate well verbally and in writing.
• Comfortable with computers and experienced with Word and Excel.
• Reliable vehicle and appropriate insurance for home visits.

Education or Formal Training:

• Master’s degree in social work, clinical psychology, or closely related field required.
• Colorado license preferred (LPC, LCSW, LMFT).

Experience:

• Three years of clinical experience as a licensed mental health professional.
• Combination of training, education, experience, and licensure that is equivalent and provides the required knowledge and abilities.

Additional Information:

• Work Schedule: Monday - Friday 8am - 5pm.
  • In-Person required - Office can be based in Canon City or Salida.
  • This program includes intensive home therapy; providing home therapy is a requirement.

Solvista Health is the safety net for our communities, delivering compassionate, dignified, and exceptional quality behavioral healthcare to individuals who are on Medicaid or uninsured. We also recognize there are limited treatment options for people on Medicare or who are privately insured and strive to serve these individuals based on available capacity. We are able to provide 24/7 mobile crisis response to everyone in our communities, regardless of insurance coverage, thanks to support from the Behavioral Health Administration and the 988 Colorado Mental Health Line.

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